Free Republic

The Hewlett-Packard Company is no stranger to job cuts: During the Carly Fiorina era in the early aughts, the company’s workforce was slashed by 30,000. Fast forward to the Meg Whitman years and the company is still thinning itself out: following job cut announcements in 2014 that amounted to a 55,000-person reduction in headcount, the tech giant said Tuesday that it expects to lose another 30,000 jobs as a part of its planned transformation. In a meeting with analysts Tuesday, HP provided an updated look at its plans to split into two publicly traded companies – HP Inc, which will...

John McCain over the weekend defended the $42 million received by one of his top economic advisers, Carly Fiorina, when she was fired as CEO of Hewlett Packard in 2005."I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects," McCain told "The Today Show's" Meredith Vieira shen she pressed him on the matter in light of McCain's recent accusations of greed on Wall Street. -snip- Fiorina received $21 million in severance pay when she was fired as CEO of Hewlett Packard in 2005. She received an additional $21 million when Hewlett Packard's board bought out her company stock...

Pension funds want former CEO to pay back part of $42 million package. A group of Hewlett-Packard Co. shareholders are suing the company, alleging its board broke its own rules by awarding more than $42 million in cash, stock and other benefits to Carly Fiorina after she was dumped as CEO last year. The complaint, filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, depicts the payments to Fiorina as a blatant violation of a board policy adopted in 2003 so the company’s severance payments would be limited to 2.99 times an executive’s combined salary and annual bonus. Based...

With Fiorina as chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard's value declined significantly and the technology giant endured massive layoffs. Fiorina led a largely unsuccessful merger with Compaq in 2002, going against the wishes of company founder Walter Hewlett. Asked by the board of directors to step down in 2005, Fiorina left with $21 million in cash, plus stock and pension benefits worth another $19 million. According to HP executive compensation rules, departing executives are entitled to no more than 2.99 times their base salary; anything more requires stockholder approval. Fiorina's parachute was more than that, so the stockholders filed a class action...

Carleton S. Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, will receive a severance package worth about $21.4 million, and stands to gain at least $21.1 million more. The additional amount reflects the estimated value of her pension, stock options and Hewlett stock holdings, which the company did not include in her severance package. Ms. Fiorina was forced to resign Tuesday after the board concluded that she failed to reverse Hewlett's sagging stock price and accelerate the company's turnaround after the merger with Compaq Computer. She will receive $14 million in severance pay, or two and a half times her 2004...

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals. The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages. Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

President Bush will speak in a few minutes. Get to a TV and watch it, if you have the stomach for it.

A side-by-side (it's a Word doc) on the various plans, from Roy Blount's office.

... "These Credit Default Swaps have been written (as insurance is written) as private contracts. There is nil government regulation of them. Who writes these policies? Banks. Investment banks. Insurance companies. They now owe the buyers of these Credit Default Swaps on junk mortgage debt trillions of dollars. It is this liability that is the bottomless pit of liability for the financial institutions of America." ...

Excerpt - The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said Sunday that it won't allow the companies to make "golden parachute" severance payments to the mortgage companies' ousted chief executive officers. In a statement, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said such payments wouldn't be made to Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, despite provisions in their contracts. Mr. Mudd served as chief executive of Fannie and Mr. Syron was chairman and CEO of Freddie until last weekend, when the regulator seized control of the companies, saying they were in danger of running out of capital. ~ snip ~

(Agencies) Hewlett Packard chairwoman and chief executive Carly Fiorina quickly claimed victory Tuesday in her company's bitter proxy battle to buy Compaq Computer Corp., saying a preliminary estimate of shareholder votes shows enough support to approve the merger. "It appears that our shareholders made a choice today, not only to embrace change, but to lead it," Fiorina said after the two-hour meeting. "We think we have a slim but sufficient margin, and we think it's important to let people know that." Fiorina spoke at the conclusion of a meeting of more than 1,000 Hewlett-Packard Co. shareholders who crowded into a...